Risks of moving a site back to an old domain

[AxonnMedia]

Hi

Nearly 2 years ago our site was moved from a .co.uk domain to .media. Because this TLD isn't supported for DA, it's hard to measure whether linkbuilding campaigns (for example) are having a positive effect. The old site has a DA of 38 (even after 2 years of inactivity) and the new one is 1, but the new one has better Trust and Citation flow, for example.

I'm now investigating whether it's worth moving back to .co.uk and I want to fully understand the risks involved. So far I know of the following potential risks:

• It's a lot of work so human error is a real risk
• Could create a redirect loop as the old site has 301 redirects in place to the new one
• It will take several months for metrics to recover

Any thoughts on more risks, how these challenges can be overcome etc will be welcome. Or do I just set fire to the lot and create a new site with yet another 301 redirect from the .media site?

What would you do?

[DmitriiK]

No problem

[AxonnMedia]

Excellent, that is in our measurement plan. Thanks again for your help.

[DmitriiK]

I always go by rankings Cause when you do link building, you target specific keyphrase/topic. So, i check if overall amount of links increased from domains (or with anchor texts I want), then I simply check rankings. Ahrefs' rank is a quick metric to look at as well.

[AxonnMedia]

Hi Dmitrii - Thanks for taking the time to reply! What would you say are the very best tools/metrics for tracking backlink building efforts (except DA)?

[AxonnMedia]

Thank you!

What if MOZ doesn't measure DA for my site though, which metrics would you say are most important? Because I need a strong, tangible way to report on linkbuilding efforts.

[BlueCorona]

To echo what Dimitri has said, though domain authority is important, the traffic to your site and the rank of each page of your site is more important (given those have gone up since switching domains). Moz is a great way to check in on domain authority and see how you backlinking efforts have gone.

[DmitriiK]

Howdy.

The one metric is surely not a reason for changing a domain. Instead of worrying about DA is not pooping up, ask yourself the questions about rankings, traffic, engagement etc. So, how have rankings done up? did traffic improve? Do people have brand/domain recognition?

If any of the answers are yes, don't worry about DA. There are bunch of other ways to track your backlink building efforts. Eg., as you said, Trust and Citation Flow. MOZ has similar metrics as well.

Hope this helps.